12/7/2010 World Cup boosts Spain's Eskup | Me…

World Cup boosts Spain's Eskup

The interactive online tool from El País, Spain's biggest
newspaper, has proved a hit during the country's World Cup
campaign

Iker Seisdedos
The Guardian, Monday 1 2 July 2 01 0

Discu ssion of Spain's football play ers, including Dav id Villa, has been a hot topic on Eskup. Photograph:
Jasper Juinen/Getty Im ages

With Spain in its first World Cup final yesterday, there were any number of ways to
follow David Villa, Xavi Hernández and co as they made history. The TV channels ran
round-the-clock coverage and fans jammed radio stations' phonelines.

But for those who wanted something more interactive, Spain's largest newspaper, El
País, offered another avenue - Eskup, a new online tool that allows readers to write short
articles, opinion pieces or even running commentaries on the games. With a name that
plays on the idea of a "scoop", Eskup is a mix of social networking and a source for
breaking news.

"The idea is to open the newspaper to the readers, to put them on the same level, and
give the daily a more social feeling", says Borja Echevarría, deputy editor of El País and a
pioneer in Spanish digital media who founded the online paper soitu.es.

The first demonstration of Eskup's real potential has been the coverage of the World
Cup. Each game was commentated on by several football writers but also readers who
wanted to express their growing excitement as Spain progressed to the final; some were
focused on instant information while others delivered analysis.

Part of the success of Eskup, launched in June, has been the creation of subjects that
gather users around common interests, such as golf, fashion, books, cycling or the recent
gay pride celebrations. Registration is required to play an active part in Eskup, and it
now has 15,000 signed-up members, in addition to the 400 El País journalists in the
newsroom, with up to 100,000 readers a day following what they have to say.

Once a user completes their profile, they can write short texts of 280 characters (double
that permitted in Twitter, an obvious inspiration), and include pictures and videos. They
can follow or be followed by other members, "retweet" their messages or share them in
other social networks such as Facebook.

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12/7/2010 World Cup boosts Spain's Eskup | Me…
"It is not a bubble inside elpais.com, it promotes connection, which is the heart of the
internet," says Echevarría. A team in the newsroom oversees the information delivered
by the community. They select messages to feed the breaking news section of
elpais.com.

Its critics object that Eskup is only a tool for communication and not for journalism, and
that it converts the writers of El País, a newspaper known for its quality and in-depth
journalism, into news agency workers more focused on immediacy than on good
reporting.

Echevarría disagrees. "If we use this channel to give real time information in short texts,
it lends our writers time to focus on reporting in the traditional ways."

• Iker Seisdedos is deputy culture editor of El País

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